


Order of the Spider

by diapason



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, but like they do hardly anything, featuring many many names that have no significance to my real life, inadequate tagging, mj gives no fucks, peter learns self love, spider-man fanclub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 17:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16142492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diapason/pseuds/diapason
Summary: Peter's feeling bad about a mission. Ned knows just who to call.





	Order of the Spider

Stark Enterprises might have had the technology to mend Peter’s broken arm before school in the morning, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to, in the very uncaring nurse’s words, “hurt like a bitch all day”. Lack of sleep combined with stress over approaching deadlines and left Peter practically ready to cry at the slightest twinge of his former fracture. At least it was his left arm so he could still write… Actually, on second thought, that was probably worse.

Peter was shaken from staring blankly into his locker by his spider sense flaring up all along his shoulder. He turned just in time to miss Ned’s hand coming down hard on the injured arm and watched it trail pathetically through the air before coming to a stop at his side.

“Dude!” Peter complained. “I told you I was hurt!”

“Oh. Sorry. I was going to tell you that –”

“Can it wait? I’m… really not in the mood today.”

“What’s wrong?”

Peter hesitated. He could blame the arm, let Ned think this was nothing more than post-fight crankiness, or he could let slip his more internalised reason to be moody. The hallway was practically empty, save a few couples pinning each other against lockers or unremarkable students checking their phones. He could be a little more honest, just this once.

“Spider-Man… He had a job, yesterday, and he kinda screwed it up big time. People got hurt who didn’t even need to know there was something wrong… It was…”

Another pause. He wasn’t really getting to the heart of the problem as it was.

“He’s not… as good as the big guys. You know, you got The Avengers, big time heroes, no double lives to lead, no masks, always come out on top… and then there’s me. I don’t know, it’s lame, I just…”

Ned met Peter’s eyes when he looked up. There was no derision in Ned’s face, however; no shock that he’d let such a mistake happen, made Mr Stark have to fly a suit in for cleanup and damage control; no disgust at his failure as a hero. He just looked… sad.

“Is something wrong?” Peter asked, immediately concerned.

“Not with me, dude,” Ned replied with earnest, “I gotta introduce you to some friends of mine.”

“Huh?”

But Ned was already turning to leave in the direction of the Forensics classrooms, tapping at his phone and gesturing for Peter to follow behind – so he did.

They weaved around a couple of trolleys and displays that cluttered the hallway in order to reach the classroom on the very end of the row: F023. Peter had never seen this room used in his one-and-a-half years of attending Midtown, and had simply assumed it was beyond reprieve. Ned ushered him into the darkened lab, however, and sat Peter down with a weird amount of solemnity.

“Okay, seriously, what is this about?” he asked, as Ned began to draw the curtains.

“All in time, mi amigo,” was his only response.

Once they were in complete darkness, Peter started hearing shuffling around him. He could sense the presence of maybe seven or eight people on every side of him, like they had formed a circle and he was the sacrifice at the centre. What the hell was Ned doing?

Finally, the shuffling stopped, and Peter saw Ned’s face lit by his phone screen for a second before he successfully activated the torch. This he shone intentionally into his face like it was a lit candle and the others were meant to be his robed disciples.

“Why are we having an emergency meeting?” asked a stranger’s voice to Peter’s left.

“Shut up, I’m calling the ceremony,” Ned replied, annoyed.

There was silence.

“Okay. The Order of The Spider has come to assembly. You may sit.” There was a screeching of chair legs along floors as they all pulled out the nearest seat from behind tables. “Casey, can you get the light?”

A beat, and the classroom was lit. Casey (who Peter barely knew from his Calculus class) returned to her place in the circle.

“Is that Parker?” somebody said behind him.

“Uh, yeah,” he nodded, frowning, “Ned, what the fuck?”

“Basically,” Ned addressed his ‘order’, “Peter’s somehow got the impression that Spider-Man’s lame. I figured you guys would be willing to argue him on that.”

Around Peter, his classmates and strangers alike nodded solemnly, like they now understood their purpose. Some of these people had to be seniors – what were they doing here?

“Is this, like, a Spider-Man fanclub?”

“Pretty much,” came a familiar voice to Peter’s right, and he turned to see MJ chewing gum and scrolling on her phone. “Except Ned’s super serious about it – I just think he’s cool or whatever.”

“… Right.”

“So,” Ned announced, “who would like to inform Mr Parker here of the greatness that is Spider-Man first?”

There was a pause. Then a voice came from behind him, which he whirled around to identify.

“Uh… I’m Jake,” said a tiny freshman, ruffling his hair anxiously. “Spider-Man saved my mom when her bakery burned down, so it’s kinda thanks to him I can still go here. But besides that, I just think he’s super awesome! Like, it’s gotta be hard to be a masked vigilante, always saving the day but never getting the same recognition as all the other Avengers, and I think it’s really brave and modest of him to do that, y’know. If I had magic spider powers I wouldn’t be able to do the same things he does, a-and neither would you, so he deserves at least some recognition for all the super awesome saving he’s done.”

Peter blinked.

“Casey Martin, sixteen, school newspaper,” piped up his classmate. “But you know that. But what you probably don’t know is that I actually met Spider-Man once! And I asked him why he did what he did, why he protected New York like he does instead of slinging off to go save the whole world with Iron Man and all of them, and he just said it was cause he liked it. Imagine that! Saving so many people all the time just because it’s what you want to do! And I was gonna buy him a slushie because the 7-11 was right there but then he just left, but it was still super cool to get to meet him. Anyway, my main point about why Spider-Man is the best Avenger is that he basically never gets ambushed, I don’t know if that’s a superpower or if he’s just that good, but his enemies never land the first blow. You don’t see Captain America catching a hit from behind before the other guy’s even made a noise. That’s so cool to me.”

He remembered that day. Casey had caught him after he stopped a mugging, exhausted and ready to pick up his bag and his clothes from behind the 7-11, and he hadn’t had time to think about his response. She wrote about it in the school paper the next day; May still had it pinned to the fridge.

“My name’s Tara,” a goth girl Peter was pretty sure was a senior began, “I’ve never actually met Spider-Man, but I think he could totally win the next Best Avenger survey. Iron Man’s had that title long enough. And sure, he gave Spider-Man the suit, but it’s what he does with it that makes him better. Tony Stark’s just a metal Batman. Spider-Man has no comic book equivalent.”

“Spider-Man basically makes the Avengers,” said a boy with – was that a Spider-Man _shirt?_ – and a pin on his bag. “Like, sure, there’s all these cool guys with spy skills and magic and big metal suits. But you throw in a guy like Spider-Man and suddenly the team has a heart. We’re pretty sure he’s younger than the rest of them, too, which is amazing, cause for the little kids it’s like, see? You can be a hero too. My little sister is ob _sessed_ , we have to buy her all the action figures, and she never puts her Spider-Man away. One time she slept with it. It was adorable.”

“My dad used to work for Stark and he said that there’s a whole Spider-Man themed wing of the LA headquarters. Like Google, but instead it’s just the Spider-Man Appreciation Station. I kept begging him to take a photo for me until he changed jobs so he could move back here,” a freshman girl explained.

“Spider-Man has such a cool costume. It’s like if Iron Man had a team to come up with his suit – and the one before the metal one was pretty awesome too. Not just anyone can pull off blue and red. Even an Avenger should have trouble with that,” posited another girl, this one clad in pastel yellow and blue.

 They continued to pipe up from around the circle, different kids from different walks of life, all with their own reasons about why they loved Spider-Man. Some had personal experience with him, some had never even been near a fight, but everyone was in agreement that Spider-Man deserved all the credit he was given and more. The weirdest part, though, was that every single student referred to Spider-Man as an Avenger. Not just one wild card – people he knew and total strangers alike.

“You’re all serious?” he asked, after the last kid had stepped back into her place.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Ned replied, circling round to stand next to Peter. “Spider-Man’s, like, the best, dude.”

“Yeah, why were you so obsessed with hating him?” one of the freshmen asked loudly.

“I… I don’t know,” Peter finally admitted. Sure, he might lose a couple of fights every now and again, but he was Spider-Man, and all these kids were ready to defend his honour to the death. He must be doing something right if they were all so passionate about the subject.

“Alright, class starts in like five minutes, so the Order of the Spider is dismissed,” Ned announced, and in seconds the classroom returned to normal; blinds raised, chairs back in place, and students vanishing out the door like lightning. Peter blinked a few times before quite daring to stand up from where the middle of the circle used to be.

“You do this often?”

“I found my market,” Ned explained, as though he were a child who had asked why Mommy had to go to work. “People love the spider, man. And I figured it’s always good to have somebody in the know direct the flow of support, so you can’t get a bad rep in the news if something ever goes sour. You know, like in the Superman comics. He punches one guy and suddenly the Daily Planet’s full of gossip. If I make sure the people I know have the full story, it gets around."

“That’s… pretty smart,” admitted Peter.

“I know. That’s why I thought of it.”

“Ned… Thank you. For whatever that was. It made me feel a lot better about the job, y’know.”

“Well, you know me. I’m your friendly neighbourhood Ned Leeds. I do what I can to keep the peace.”

He saluted and backed out the door, presumably headed to his first period class without Peter, who replaced his stool below a desk and followed suit – that is, until his spider sense suddenly informed him that he was not alone the moment Ned vanished from sight. He whirled around and realised it was –

“Michelle?”

“MJ. You know that.”

“You’ve been here the whole time?”

“I’m quiet.”

“So you heard me talking about –“

“Yeah. You’re the Big S. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Wh- _obvious???_ "

“Why else is Ned gonna call us all up here to tell some random sophomore all about how much they love Spider-Man? If it was anybody else who wasn’t actually Spider-Man they wouldn’t care at all. You’ve gotta be the real deal if what we’re saying actually matters to you.”

“I don’t…”

“So, I think you’re pretty awesome. Or whatever.”

MJ shrugged, rose from leaning on her desk, and hit him straight on the arm in what he assumed was meant to be a friendly punch but which would have had any normal kid with a broken arm doubled over. As it was, he pulled away with a hiss of pain, still staring at her. And then she just walked out, like it was nothing.

Well. At least one of his problems was solved.

**Author's Note:**

> i think i found this prompt on twitter? im probably not the first to write it but i wrote this instead of doing homework so here you go


End file.
